The author examines the Great Influenza Epidemic of 1918 that killed an estimated 40 to 100 million people in the world, and delves into the mystery that still surrounds it. Kolata takes readers into the lab where scientists today are working with samples of the virus, and addresses the prospects for a recurrence of an equally lethal pandemic.

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Chapter One: A Strategy to Defeat World Hunger

In the blistering, heart-rending drought and depression days of 1932 I was a ten-year-old boy growing up in Mitchell, South Dakota. Most of the time I was a contented youngster, but some memories are not pleasant. A lifetime later, I recall the huge boiling dust clouds that rolled across the parched Dakota plains, hiding the sun in a darkness like midnight. The finely ground dirt not only blackened the sky; it came hard at the crevices of our eyes, ears, noses, and throats. The tiniest cracks or openings in windows and doors ushered the dust inside.

The first such fearful storm that I remember happened during a summer hike several miles east of Mitchell with my boyhood friend Vernon Hersey. After failing efforts to grope our way in the blinding dust to a country road, Vernon suggested that the Milwaukee railroad tracks would lead us back to Mitchell. We followed them homeward, listening over the howling wind for a train whistle.

When the Dakota sun was not blotted out by dust storms, it was frequently shrouded by flying grasshopper invasions. They could strip growing crops down to the ground in a matter of hours. Farmers who had invested their cash and months of labor in planting and nurturing crops would watch their harvest disappear. The voracious pests would even devour the wooden handles of hoes and pitchforks.

My father was a Wesleyan Methodist clergyman who believed in God, John Wesley , and the St. Louis Cardinals. This "Holy Trinity" helped our household get through the Depression. I knew about the Twelve Apostles, but I knew even more about the CardinalsGashouse Gang